Telekinesis

Thu 4th Jun, 2009 in Features

Imagine your little brother’s drum teacher of eight years formed what some would describe as a fairly successful band called Death Cab Something a few years back, and recently introduced him to lead guitarist, Chris Walla. Then imagine Walla discovers that your little brother actually makes really lovely pop songs – the likes with which he is so enamoured, he asks if he could help him record and release an album. Your little brother agrees (obviously).

So okay, this scenario really only applies if you happen to be related to Michael Benjamin Lerner, aka Telekinesis. With every animated word from this 22-year-old Seattle native, he paints a picture of the kid who made it and can barley believe his luck. “It’s all happened so quickly,” he enthuses. “A lot of the songs were written less than a year ago, and I’ve only been playing with the band live for about eight months, so it’s all really fresh and exciting and I’m having such a fun time. It’s like a dream come true.”

Garnering the attention of Pitchfork, Spin and Under the Radar, Lerner’s rise to the status of recording artist might have been a sudden, but not undeserved one based wholly on his excellent connections. Thanks to his day job in a Seattle recording studio, he is well-trained and equipped, describing himself as a “studio writer” primarily.

“I’m a drummer first, a guitar player second and a bass player third, so I need to record it into a computer and layer the parts together into the structure of a song before the whole thing happens,” Learner explains. “Because of the way the songs are structured in the studio, it’d be hard to write them in van or a bus or something. But I think it’s exciting; it’s different that way. With the lyrics, a lot of the time it just happens as a stream of consciousness, I’ll go for a walk and it’ll just get written. It’s like a kind of weird therapy; it just kind of comes out.”

Having been employed for years selling indie records in his hometown prior to meeting Walla, Lerner’s passion and commitment to music ironically sees him pining for the days pre-success. “I miss it all the time,” Lerner confesses. “When you work in a record store, you get to hear every single record that is coming out every single week. It’s crazy how much you start to know about music. Now I don’t know anything that’s coming out because I can’t listen to new records. I’ve lost so much of the knowledge I used to have.”

When prompted to predict how this new-found limited access to music would affect his song-writing in the future, Lerner is upbeat but realistic. “I think it will have an effect on things later on, and probably does now because of all the stuff the record store exposed me to. I listened to so many bands, new and old. Music is my passion and I listen to it constantly, but I also try to put a lot of myself in it. It’s just really cool to hear what other people are doing with theirs all over the world.”

One band from abroad who have particularly piqued Lerner’s interest are New Zealand indie darlings Cut Off Your Hands, with whom he toured last year. “They are so great live, and really are the sweetest people you could ever meet. And they’re really bashful when they’re not playing. They’d be like, – œErr, hi, how are you? Yeah I’m good, umm…’ and then they get on stage and they’re jumping into the crowd and going crazy.”

Not one to stage-jump himself, but committed to putting on a stellar live show nonetheless, Lerner is currently zipping through Europe following his Statewide US tour. Particularly fond of Tokyo (as his lead single of the same name would suggest), he lets me in on his touring hopes for the future.

“I haven’t been to Tokyo yet! I think would totally like it though, it just looks amazing. And dude, I really hope I can tour Australia some time. I have a friend in Sydney who works at a record label – - œArchitecture’ something? Man, it seems like such a cool place.”

Telekinesis is out now on Rogue through Inertia.